The craving for the unknown is an easily explainable thing. It is extremely difficult to study a phenomenon about which there is practically no information and, moreover, in which not even everyone believes, but at the same time it is incredibly interesting. So, even the most eminent scientists - for example, Stephen Hawking - were taken to study the topic of the existence of UFOs without fear of risking their reputation. At the same time, a number of projects devoted to extraterrestrial civilizations were immersed in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy.
Project "Grid", USSR
The year 1997 in history was marked by such an event as the Petrozavodsk phenomenon. With the onset of dusk, an unidentified flying object was seen in the sky - according to eyewitnesses, in shape it resembled a jellyfish and emitted a bright glow. Due to the fact that the incident had more than enough spectators, it became widely known and motivated Soviet scientists to open a whole project called "Grid" with the participation of the Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Defense.
In the course of the study, all military units were instructed to observe what was happening in the sky around the clock: all unusual and atypical phenomena were instantly recorded. They also took into account the reports from eyewitnesses and the data provided by the stations of the State Committee for Hydrometry. The project was kept in absolute secrecy, but at the same time it existed for quite a long time - for the whole thirteen years, employees of the Academy of Sciences analyzed large amounts of information and sought to find objective evidence of the existence of UFOs. In 1990, the existence of the program was terminated, and ten years later, some of the results were highlighted in the Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to the publication, most of the recorded phenomena turned out to be nothing more than natural factors and the origin of only 10% of unidentified flying objects could not be explained. The audience of the magazine (including professional ufologists) was not satisfied with this information, which gave rise to rumors about the sale of some of the secret documents to American researchers. However, this information also remained unconfirmed.
Project "Stork", USA
American scientists have made many attempts to prove or, on the contrary, to finally refute the existence of UFOs. In order not to attract undue public attention to the next attempt, it was decided to completely classify some of the studies. This happened with the "Aist" project, which operated from 1947 to 1952. The secret project was overseen by three researchers: Battel Memorial Institute employee, Mettalurg Howard Clinton Cross, computer hardware specialist Miles Gol and ufologist Edward Ruppelt - the author of the term "unidentified flying object", and all the collected data was sent directly to the National Archives and Records Administration.
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After the official closure of the project, only a small part of the final reports of the project got into free access, but they did not contain remarkable results. Later, Clinton Cross, commenting on the activities of the project, noted that researchers did not have enough weighty arguments to publish really striking facts. But there were also suggestions that the curators of "Aist" did not dare to cover interesting finds for fear of provoking the government to take drastic steps in defense of the state. One way or another, all unpublished documents are still classified as "top secret".
Blue Book Project, USA
Around the middle of the 20th century - 1947 - the entire American town of Roswell discussed the wreck of a flying ship allegedly belonging to a UFO. Whether this incident was recorded by the "Stork" project is unknown, but it was the beginning of two other similar projects: Sign (from the English sign) and Grudge (from the English envy / cause of discontent). Both studies, designed to record unidentified cosmic signals and explain their origin, were quickly closed.
The official reason was called their inefficiency and inexpediency. However, already in 1952, according to the order of the government, a new, much larger program called "Blue Book" was launched. The project even celebrated its coming of age, having existed for exactly 18 years. This time, the famous astronomer Allen Hynek was entrusted with studying the mysterious phenomena. It is worth noting that even after joining the project, Hynek remained a skeptic for a long time - his intentions were to analyze in detail every recorded unusual case and explain why he had nothing to do with extraterrestrial civilizations. But having processed several hundred (!) Received applications, the astronomer "dropped his hands" and admitted that most cases defy scientific interpretation. After its closure, the official project documentation was published: the reports stated,that 701 cases of potential UFO sightings remained without any explanation.